 Hello, everybody. Uh, E here. I've been kicked in the gut, and I am messed up. So that, of course, means I read another David Joy book. Uh, this one is the line that held us. The whole reason I read this book this month is because David Joy on Twitter said that it ends around Halloween on Halloween. I can't remember exactly what he said, so he said it's kind of a Halloween book. It isn't. Um, do I regret reading it during Halloween? No, because after one major disappointment hunting at Hill House, I had to read something that I was going to like, and I knew Joy never disappoints, so I fell back on Joy because truth be told, I am tired of horror. I don't know what it is, man, but even the Halloween tree was a little harder to read this year because it just wasn't enjoying the visuals. Um, I'm having a rough time enjoying a lot of horror, new, old, otherwise. Charlie Parker books of a John Connolly, they are far more thriller than they are horror, um, but I needed something, um, and David Joy swooped in with a fantastic novel. Uh, to those of you who just want to know whether or not the book's good or not and want to get, you know, get the hell out of here, the book's fantastic. I mean, you come to expect that with this author. I have read his first book, uh, well, his first, uh, fiction novel, uh, when, where all light tends to go, um, I followed that up with The Weight of This World, which I didn't like as much, but it's still a five star read. And then I read this one, this is probably my favorite one, if for no other reason, but for the climax. The climax for me was so, so powerful. There's also a bit of horror in here, um, I don't want to give anything away, but it has to do with a root cellar and stuff happening in the root cellar that disturbed the shit out of me. Um, it bothered me a lot, uh, just reading those sections because it was emotionally powerful, but it also was icky, nasty, and it, and it doesn't, you know, I say those kind of things in people's minds, they automatically go to like rape or something like that. It has nothing to do with that. But there's a scene, there's several scenes in a root cellar that bothered me because of the attachment in those scenes. Uh, then you get to the end of the book, and once again, I don't know how Joy Keeves doing this, but you read his first book and you come to expect a certain ending. Just off that first book. You're like, okay, he writes a certain kind of book and that's what we're going to get. Then you read his next book and you don't get that. And then you come, you're up, by the time you get to the third one, so I highly suggest you read these in order. By the time you get to the third one, you're really on unstable ground. And he does a really good job of just shitting the shit out of the ground, just really just rocking you. This book, I, I am just, I've just now finished it this evening and I am in awe. I have never read an author that whose, whose work has had this much punch and was this different. Each and every book is in the same genre, has the same feel, but they are so different in how they leave you feeling. Each one will kick you in the guts, of course, it, it'll make you feel and it'll, it'll bring your emotions to the surface. But there's also that quality of unpredictability and at the end of this one, that's what really shined through because I had no idea what he was about to put me through. And it ended up being emotionally draining. And I am drained. And any book, I think any good book will challenge you either intellectually, it'll challenge you emotionally, it'll challenge just the way you see life in general. And this was one of those books. There is a really heavy, heavy, heavy spiritual side to this book that I wasn't expecting. You can call it religious, you can call it whatever you want to. I don't really call it religious unless there's like church and group involved. When I think of religion, that's what I think of. But there's one character in here that is deeply spiritual. And the character himself, you may not expect that from the character himself, and that's what made that character so strong. And there really is, in this book, there's a main focus of the book is really two characters. And I think Joy shines in that. He takes two characters and puts them in the most fucked up situation. And, you know, let's things happen naturally. And while there is a climactic ending, nothing ever feels like it's forced. You read so many books like Noir or Thriller or whatever, and those scenes feel forced. They feel like, okay, we're building up to something. And you do get that sense of dread in here, but you don't get that sense that these, you know, cog pieces are falling into place. You don't get that sense here. You just feel the sense of dire chaos, of the universe going, you know, I don't really care about you, but somehow you're gonna have to try and survive. You know, the universe doesn't give two shits about you. That's the situation that David Joy's character has always ended up in. And I love that. I am here for that. There always seems to be either a sense of redemption or no hope of redemption in his books. I don't want to spoil anything for you which one that is with this one, because that's part of the joy of reading joy, is that unpredictability. And I really feel stupid for pigeonholing him after reading his first book and thinking that everything else he wrote was going to be like that book when it turned out that none of these books are alike. Now, he really strings you along. He leaves that, he leaves that what if possibility that is missing from so much fiction these days. The one thing that comes to mind right now, just off the top of my head, there was a book called Note Exit that I read that every single plot point in that book I saw coming 20 pages before it actually hit. And it just fell into line. I mean, it was literally like I was putting a puzzle together, but the puzzle was something boring. I wish I had a better analogy than that, but that's how it felt. I was going, like me, a grown 39-year-old man was trying to put together an eight-piece children puzzle. That's what it felt like. With this, it feels like I'm putting together a puzzle that all the parts aren't there, but you still have a sense of completion. That's the best I can say about David Joy's work because you never see it coming. You don't know how these pieces fit. And when the pieces do fit, they don't fit in the way that you think that they would fit. It's really a brilliant piece of writing. I don't know how he continues to do it. He has another book that he just announced who's shown off the ARC, the pink ARC copy. And I'm laughing because he goes, it's a cover reveal when it was just like a pink cover with I think it's When These Mountains Burn. I believe that's it. I remember the mountains burn. I remember those two parts about it. But I'm really looking forward to that one. But have you read the line that held us or any of Joy's work? Leave your comments down below in the doobly-doo what you enjoyed about it. If you didn't like it, I would love to talk to somebody who doesn't like this man's work. I would love to pick your brain. So even if you don't like it, I'd love to talk to you down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E. You have been U. This has been another Book Review. I'll talk to you guys later.